If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Tianqin gravitational wave project

China's Tianqin satellite project has made breakthroughs in the key technologies to detect gravitational waves, the project's leader told a space science conference in Guangzhou.

In-orbit verification can start as progress has been made on inertial sensing, laser interferometry, the drag-free control system and satellite platform, Luo Jun, a physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also leader of Tianqin projetc, was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying at a symposium of the Xiangshan Science Conference.

Three high-orbit satellites were launched at the end of September, Luo said.

He noted that the four-phase 15 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) project, launched in 2015, should be ready to gauge waves by 2030.

China plans to launch its first satellite to test the technologies of the space-based gravitational wave detection program "Tianqin" by the end of 2019.

The program Tianqin, meaning "harp in sky," was initiated by Sun Yat-sen University in south China's Guangdong Province in 2015. It will consist of three satellites forming an equilateral triangle around the earth.

"It's like a harp in space. If the gravitational waves come, the 'harp's strings" will be plucked," said Luo Jun, president of the Sun Yat-sen University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a conference held recently in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province.